Photographic process printers that utilize CRT's for exposing a photosensitive medium have typically used proprietary hardware and software components for transferring digital image data from a central processing unit to the print engine. The digital image data is processed to create printable pixel data, and then used to expose the photosensitive medium to produce the desired image. Thus, the central processing unit (CPU) and the print engine have been one integral unit. In some situations, it would be advantageous to be able to separate the CPU, and the processing of the digital image data into printable pixel data, from the printer engine. This might be advantageous for environmental reasons, safety reasons due to the chemicals used in the developing processes, ease of use, or physical limitations on the space allocated for the photographic process printer system.
In addition, proprietary hardware components in such systems, such as the CPU and local bus, are expensive to design, maintain, and often do not transfer data at the higher speeds found in newer standard CPUs and buses. Thus, it is harder to take advantage of frequent advancements in computer technology to improve the performance of the photographic process printer system. Since digital image data tends to be quite large, data transmission is a limiting factor in the speed at which photographic process printers can process digital image data into printable pixel data to expose the photosensitive medium to produce desired images.
It is thus apparent that there is a need in the art for an improved photographic process printer system that does not require as many proprietary hardware components for processing digital image data, and thus can be more easily improved as new advancements in computer technology occur. There is a further need in the art for the CPU, which processes the digital image data into printable pixel data, to be physically separated from the print engine component in such systems, and to be able to control the print engine component from the CPU. There is also a need for a photographic process printer system that can receive printable pixel data in the print engine component from the CPU at higher speeds to shorten the time it takes to send data and expose an image. The present invention meets these and other needs in the art.